A car bomb attack killed 17 people and wounded around 70 on Monday in a Pakistan market in the northwestern town of Jamrud, close to the Afghan border, officials said.

The bomb exploded in a small market near a bus stop, killing and wounding people waiting for buses to take them across the northwest and to other parts of the country, according to officials.

Pools of blood and charred pieces of human flesh littered the roadside, along with at least 20 burnt vehicles, said an Agence France Presse reporter. Clothes, school books, children's shoes and burqas lay everywhere.

Jamrud is in Khyber district, which is part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt where the Taliban and al-Qaida-linked groups have strongholds.

A government office of the district administration was around 100 metres from where the bomb detonated but was not damaged in the attack, according to an AFP reporter.

"At least 17 people were killed and 71 others wounded in the blast caused by an explosive-laden car, which had been parked very close to the waiting area for passengers," Khyber's most senior administration official, Mutahir Zeb, told AFP.

He said ordinary civilians and not the government office, some distance from the explosion, were the target.

"We are still are ascertaining what procedure was exactly used to blow up the vehicle," he said.

Also Monday, gunmen riding a motorbike shot dead a government official and two police officers in Pakistan's troubled southwestern city of Quetta, police said.